Robert led the workers back down the stairs about an hour later. He pulled a couple of bills out of his wallet, handed it to one of them and patted them on the back as they exited.

"You may never see that girl again," Robert said as he slumped onto the couch. "Oh, sorry, Tiff."

"For what?" Tiffany asked.

"I didn't mean it that way."

"Don't be silly, even I still use that expression all the time."

"Can I get you some coffee?" Sean asked. "We also have tea."

Tiffany grimaced. "Yeah, it's delightful. Noah won't let me drink coffee."

"I'll take the coffee, thanks," Robert said, getting up and serving himself.

"We probably should be getting ready to go to the hospital, right?" Tiffany asked.

"Yeah," Sean said. "It's about that time." He went to the foot of the stairs. "Maren, honey!" Silence followed. "Maren!"

She finally appeared at the head of the stairs. "Maren, honey, you want to help your mother get ready?" he asked.

Maren looked briefly in the direction of her room and her new toy, but then came down the stairs. "Sure I do."

Tiffany picked herself up and Maren took her hand and led her back to the guest bedroom. "Nothing orange, OK, honey?"

"Can I put your makeup on, Mom? I know how to do it, I've watched you a billion times."

"Uh, sure, honey," Tiffany said with slight concern in her voice as they moved into the room.

Sean and Robert stifled a laugh. "Oh well, at least she won't be able to see the results," Robert said.

"That is cold, old buddy."

"Like you weren't thinking it too."

"OK, I was. But at least I didn't say it."

About 90 minutes later, Sean pulled into a vacant spot in the hospital parking lot. He rushed to the other side to help his wife, but Tiffany had already gotten out and was straightening her blazer.

"Tell me the truth, Sean."

"About what, honey?"

"How did she do?" Tiffany said, inquiring about her daughter's makeup job.

"Actually she did a tremendous job. You look gorgeous."

"Thank you," she said, taking her husband's arm as they walked to the door.

"In the interests of full disclosure, I do have to tell you she used a little orange blush and sort of burnt sienna eye shadow, but it looks very natural."

"Hmmm," Tiffany said, unsure.

"You look like you've been lying on the beach at Cannes, very warm and kind of summery," Sean said.

"That doesn't sound bad."

"It isn't."

"Would you tell me if it was?"

"I'm not really sure," Sean replied quickly as they walked through the hallway. "How about we take a walk by the waterfront after this?"

"That sounds nice, but shouldn't we get back to Maren? It his her birthday"

"I think she'll be tooling around on her computer for hours. Probably won't even notice we're gone. … We used to love to walk down there when we got the chance."

"Used to? Like before Maren was born?"

"No, used to like last week," Sean said.

"This must be incredibly difficult for you, Sean. You had this whole life and now it's gone."

"I don't believe it's gone for good."

"But it's difficult."

"It's … I don't really know what to call it. It's not difficult, because we're together. Difficult was when you didn't know me from Adam."

"I'm sorry," Tiffany said.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, honey."

"I am anyway."

They arrived at the nurses station in front of the CAT scan room. "Tiffany Donely," Sean said to the nurse. "She has an appointment for 11 for a CAT scan."

"We're running a little behind. It'll be a few minutes," the nurse said. "Please have a seat."

"Of course," Sean said, leading Tiffany to a nearby couch and sitting besides her. "You still have that headache?"

"A little, but not really," Tiffany said. "I think it's more for me sort of straining to see things and not really anything else."

Sean took her hands in his and kissed them.

A couple of hours later, they were strolling on the waterfront.

"Why don't you tell me something else about us?" she asked.

"I don't know, maybe we should save that for when we get home."

"I think it's fine. I feel fine. Considering what day it is, why don't you tell me about when Maren was born? Unless that's too stressful," she said disarmingly.

"Actually that went about as well as it could," he said, leading her to a park bench.

"Meaning?"

"By most standards, Maren's birth would be considered an easy delivery."

"Easy?" Tiffany said, not quite believing it.

"Well, you were actually already at the hospital. You had just done a report on the condition of a gunshot victim."

"Ugh," Tiffany said.

"And I was in the hospital therapy room, going through the same exercises for like the billionth time. Your broadcast was on one of the televisions in the room. … You were just putting the tag on it and..."

"The tag?"

"Oh, the tag is when you say who you are and the station and send it back to the studio."

"Oh," Tiffany said, not recalling that.

"And I'll never forget this, you had just said 'This is Tiffany Hill for WBOS' and you stopped in your tracks and looked down. And you said it again 'This is Tiffany Hill for WBOS at Boston Memorial … and my water just broke'," Sean stopped and smiled at the memory.

Tiffany laughed out loud. "What did you do?"

"I jumped up and ran out of the room." Tiffany laughed again. "I couldn't find you at first, I couldn't figure out which door you were standing outside of. Then finally I came up with the bright idea of just going to the Emergency Room and there you were. You were only in labor for about seven hours…"

"Seven hours! That's easy?"

"Well, they say with the first baby …" Sean took a long pause, looking away, and trying not to think about the baby they had lost. "… they say it can last a whole day before the baby pops out."

"Pops out?"

"You know what I mean. But you were just glowing the whole time. I'll never forget it. You were so beautiful, just happy and excited. The only stress we had was coming up with a name. We spent the whole seven hours discussing every girl's name in the known universe probably."

"We knew she was going to be a girl?"

"Yes, the doctor had told us a couple of months before. And we had pored through all these baby names books and we just could not settle on something."

"Settle on a name for someone as precious as Maren."

"That's exactly what you said at the time."

"So right when she was born, there was a national news broadcast on and the reporter said 'Live from Marin County, I'm…' whoever-the-hell-he was." Tiffany laughed again. "And you said, that's it, Maren! And we couldn't figure out why we couldn't remember that from the baby names book. Until we got home from the hospital with her the next day…"

"And?"

"And we looked it up."

"And?"

"And 'Maren' is English for 'sea of bitterness'."

"Oh heavens," Tiffany said. "Well, it just takes someone as precious as Maren to change that meaning."

"Baby, again, that's exactly what you said at the time."

They smiled, he pulled her closer to him on the bench and they listened to the sounds of the harbor.